If you were to ever meet Charles Hessemer you would assume him to be just a gray-haired retiree living in Florida. You would be curious about what he did during his eight decades, and quite likely would be amazed to hear. It is quickly observed that he is a serious man, but about what?          

    Ask him if he graduated from college, and he will say, no, I graduated from the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Press him further to learn that he studied to become both a fine artist and an advertising art director. And did he succeed in those dual careers?  He will say yes to both. Citing some of the trail of National Accounts and advertising campaigns, he might admit to you that he was acknowledged as a man whose ideas were too far ahead of his time. That he should pack his tyoewriter and go to New York where his ideas would be appreciated.

    You might learn that during his career with several  national advertising agencies, he developed his art and writing gifts to become Executive Art Director and Creative Director. He was a member of a three-man think tank named Group 11, one of the first of its kind.

    When you ask him how he had any time left for painting, he will answer, "I create time for painting, I do it by saving time, instead of wasting it."

    Ask him how old he was when he decided to become an artist, and he will tell you very late. Just turned 18, and graduating from basic training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, he and five other reqruits were sent to the Department of the Navy in Washington DC on special duty. Each man was assigned to a desk. His was empty, except for a lonely book in the bottom drawer. The book was entitled "How to Draw the Figure." This was not dumb luck. He will tell you the book was waiting for him. An act of Divine Providence. The book was a quided missile landing in his hands. Within the week, Hessemer was enrolled in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the art department of George Washington University,  and he had finally found himself.

  Three years later, he returned to his home in Jackson, Michigan, a town with no future, for itself or for anyone with talent who chose to stay there. There he continued his pursuit of a career by enrolling in the Famous Artists correspondents course published in Westport, Connecticut. Entering multiple categories in the Jackson County Fair, he was awarded blue ribbons on every entry, and an invitation to visit the judge was attached to a painting. 

   This was where he got his start. The Judge told him "you have what it takes, get your butt out of this town, you don't belong here, enroll in the American Academy of Art in Chicago." 

   He will tell you how he walked in for his first day of school to the intoxicating smell of turpentine. He knew he had finally found his home and his future. 

    Ask him why he paints with a  palette knife and  he will say " I learned it can do things a brush cannot."

    He does not use his knife for superficial effects, as do the many Meditteranean resort painters, or the painters who use the palette knive on a brush painting just for superficial knive effects, or those who paint just to sell, and amazingly, do sell.

    He has been likened to Emily Dickinson, The Moth of Amherst, who is considered to be one of the most important poets in American history. Dickinson wrote her poems in solitude, rarely seen in public. She wrote Eighteen hundred poems, but fewer than a dozen were published in her lifetime.